So you are clearly on a Linux. Does that Linux support apt-get (i.e. Debian based?) If so I strongly recommend using the apt-get install rather than the manual install. You can use the nightly builds repository so you always have the latest if that is your concern.
http://docs.openhab.org/installation/linux.html
With a manual install you shouldn’t HAVE to create the openhab user, though it is strongly recommended and the instructions have you do so. You can run it as root or any other user so long as that user has the right permissions for needed resources (e.g. that user is a member of the dialout group if it need to read/write to a /dev/tty* device like the zwave controller).
The nice thing about the apt-get install is it creates this user and sets the permissions for you.
I really have no idea what went wrong but whatever it was it majorly went wrong as no one has reported anything like these problems. The typical install goes:
- Add the desired repo to apt
- apt-get install openhab2
- install bindings through PaperUI
- set configuration, Things and Items as appropritate
or
- create openhab user
- download desire opnehab2 distro
- unzip to /opt/openhab2
- change ownership of /opt/openhab2 recursively to openhab:openhab
- run it as the openhab user using start.sh
- copy the .service file and enable OH to start as a service
(Details for all of these steps are defined at the link above)
In your instructions you kind of skip over a lot of little steps regarding the steps between downloading and running. Did you chown the files in /opt/openhab2?
From your description of the behavior and what you did this is really sounding like a permissions problem where the openhab user (or whatever user you are running OH as) does not have permission to add files to the userdata folder where the bindings and configurations get stored.
You haven’t mentioned the log file. Are you seeing any errors in the /opt/openhab2/userdata/logs/openhab.log file or by logging into the karaf console and tailing the log file?
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence:
http://docs.openhab.org/installation/index.html
I’ll be the first to admit the docs are not up to where they need to be but they do exist and they cover both apt-get and manual installation pretty thoroughly.
For the exec binding, it is pretty thoroughly documented on the OH 1.x wiki (its a 1.9 binding so the 1.x docs apply), links are provided from the OH 2 docs on bindings.
http://docs.openhab.org/addons/1xaddons.html
And if you search this forum for “exec” you will literally see dozens of threads with working examples.